


Beneath the Ring

by Hobbitrocious



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Ambiguous Slash, Horror, M/M, Mild Gore, Paranormal, Undead, disembodied hands from the formless void, magical world beneath the wrestling ring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 10:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12580044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitrocious/pseuds/Hobbitrocious
Summary: Triple H is determined to unravel the mystery of the strange world beneath the wrestling ring, but in the end what he finds may unravel him.(Alternate title, If the Curiosity Doesn't Kill You, You Still Run into Dead Things)Prologue and first chapter originally written in 2015, posting specially for Halloween 2017 so the friend I wrote it for has access.  If I ever manage to finish what I started, this will eventually be a noncon slash story and the rating will go up.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TactheJoker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TactheJoker/gifts).



> (Le auteur apologises for the absurdity, but had to get it out of his system.)

There was nothing beneath the Ring.  
  
Nothing beneath the wrestling ring aside from pitch dark, more dark, some stale peanuts, and a whole lot of dust bunnies. And a light switch, and maybe still the perplexing hall that led to The Little People's Court. Hunter tried not to think about that last one too much; the experience was, altogether, unnerving.   
  
Tonight, though, curiosity brewed stronger than the fear of the weird-and-impossible factor. Triple H was going to get to the bottom of the bottomless ring once and for all. He stayed late, so late that only the night guards were left in the building, especially for an unprecedented expedition into the great Partially Known that lied waiting down there. One man, one question. Not even Shawn knew he was braving the ring's underside again.  
  
At the edge of the concealing dust curtain, it struck Hunter that it was perhaps unwise to venture in without having told someone first. After all, anything could have lain in wait for him there. He could have been disembowelled and left to die before morning, his rotting corpse not to be discovered until the entire building went through demolition, decades to come - with, tacked to his exposed ribcage by way of deeply driven dagger, a faded note which proclaimed, "midgets were here".  
  
He woke up screaming, visions of Hornswaggle maniacally stuffing Hunter's emptied eye sockets with haggis still dancing in his head.


	2. An Actual Chapter

"You have to come with me," Hunter insisted to Shawn.  
  
His own brawny arms crossed, Shawn sceptically looked his friend in the eye and asked, "Are you sure you want to go back down there, man?"  
  
It was the end of a long day. Even the mysterious Undertaker, normally the last to vanish from the locker room and call it a night, was gone.  
  
"We've got to," Hunter pressed. "It's obviously more than it appears to be. And, I mean, we owe it to the other wrestlers to discover what's down there. Right? What if, you know, there's something really dangerous about the stuff that's under there. Something that can be taken care of before it does some damage, maybe takes one of us out?"  
  
Pensive, Shawn sucked on the inside of his cheek for a moment. He said, "You wanna go down there... to find out if there's something dangerous..."  
  
"Uh-huh," Triple H nodded.  
  
"... And face it, you and me, with just what muscle we got between us?"  
  
"Um... Yeah, that was my plan." Hunter looked less sure of himself.  
  
"None of the night guards, no backup or nothin'?" Shawn clarified.  
  
More sombre than anxious now, Hunter nodded again. "Uh, yep. Just us, taking it on alone."   
  
Shawn nodded back as he regarded his comrade intensely.  
  
Hunter was dropkicked from the beginning of a nervous, frightening reverie of all the ways his plan would fail by a loud handclap and an energetic, trademark Shawn Michaels whoop.  
  
"YE-AH, Awright, let's do this!"

 

* * *

  
  
Their initial crawl under the dust curtain was the same; zero visibility, unidentifiable grime on the floor beneath their hands and knees, and a surprising amount of clearance when the men finally stood.  
  
This second time, though, the light switch did not seem to be in the same place.  
  
"It's got to be around somewhere," Shawn grumped from up ahead of Hunter.  
  
"Do you think maybe it moved?" Hunter asked distractedly while silently telling himself that the permeating dread he felt in this darkness meant nothing. Hunter heard Shawn grope around some more, and then a soft, wet impact.  
  
"Oh... Gross, man," Shawn complained. "This wall's got somethin' on it. It's all sticky, don't touch it."  
  
Hunter was about to reply, but stopped to better hear the slurpy sound of suction that followed from Shawn's direction.  
  
He heard Shawn exclaim, "What the - hey, the wall's made of some kind of sponge or something. It's got my hand!" He sounded rightfully panicked.  
  
"Shit." Hunter panicked too, "Try to pull it out, I'm coming over to you!"  
  
Before Hunter could find his friend, a louder, stronger swallow from the moist wall drowned out Shawn's desperate struggles. After managing one last scream of terror, all was silent. Shawn was gone.  
  
Hunter called out to the darkness, "Shawn? You still with me, buddy?"  
  
He received no response.  
  
"Shawn?!?"  
  
Off in the distance, Hunter thought he may have heard a metallic clink.  
  
"Michaels, if you're out there, say something!" he pleaded.  
  
Shawn didn't answer, but a half-blinding flash of lightning that came from nowhere lit the space before Hunter for one split instant.  
  
In the afterimage left floating in Hunter's eyes, which itself lasted only as long as the following peals of thunder, Hunter saw a disturbing mass of pink, rolling, fleshy Swiss cheese dripping of brownish red. It took a moment for his mind to make sense of the snapshot.  
  
The wall was alive.  
  
Hunter stumbled backward, his pounding heartbeat blurred with the roar of dying thunder.  
  
Even after he tripped over his own two feet, Hunter continued to scramble away. When he did dare to take one look back, another strike of lightning showed him an empty void where the wall had stood behind him.  
  
Hunter sat where he was on the hard floor and leaned back on his arms. Thunder followed again and made the wall's disappearance feel that much more ominous.  
  
The thunder rolled, again and again, until it rolled away. Hunter had yet to catch his breath, but what he heard emerge from the last of the roars made him strain to listen; he barely dared to breathe once he did regain his wind. A rattling clink. A few beats of quiet, a heavy clank. A pattern that repeated as though it had purpose. Hunter shakily pulled himself onto one knee and continued to listen. In the familiar, rhythmic silence between the nerve-jangling chains, Hunter could have sworn he heard the opening strains of "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down" just waiting to start.  
  
The music never came, but those chains kept up their foreboding beat. The sound gradually closed in until the source was only a few yards away. Hunter held his breath during the long pause after that and strained to discern any other noise to identify a chain bearer. He continued, futilely, to peer into the infinite, inky void.  
  
The next sharp whip of metal links on concrete hit jarringly close, right behind him.  
  
Before Hunter could turn around, there were hands on him. His heart jumped and he tried to scream, but the hands were everywhere. His jaw was held shut by one, his mouth covered by another. His wrists and ankles were caught in vicelike grips, and then his shoulders, waist, neck, knees, and biceps too.   
  
They were incredibly strong, stronger than the average fighter he met in the ring, and Hunter found himself unable to lash out against any of his assailants. The hands had him well under control.  
  
Somewhere in all his writhing and wriggling, the hands managed to manipulate him into position and hold him upright and seated. No chair supported him; only clammy, knobby hands at his back and cupped beneath his buttocks and thighs, all in addition to the others already on him.  
  
Next Hunter knew, a length of chain lashed out and caught him violently around the neck. He choked and his eyes bulged as its momentum wrapped it around and around. There were cracking bones and the squelch of blood as heavy, whipping links crushed the hands that kept their grip between the winding metal and Hunter's skin.  
  
The force holding the end of the chain pulled, and Hunter's head jerked forward. The mysterious hands must not have approved of the movement, because another one wrapped itself into Hunter's hair and used that to tether him back.  
  
The chain went slack and the other end was tossed at Hunter's feet. It dangled benignly between his legs, but remained wound around his neck to restrict his airway. A boot scuffed, and suddenly two beads of hot, blue light glowed above Hunter. He managed a frightened gasp through his bondage.  
  
Hunter blinked.   
  
The burning blue beads blinked back.  
  
Hunter renewed his struggle but could not break free of a single one of his holding points. Before his eyes, the blue orbs dissipated into a mist that emanated its own light.   
  
There in front of Hunter, revealed by that meagre, eerie light, stood the Undertaker.  
  
The many hands, too, were illuminated. Hunter fought to look down at his own legs and was met with the sight of weathered skin tinged a bloodless blue. Each clamped hand was whole as far as fingers to wrist, then appeared to merge with the black surroundings. They were honest-to-God disembodied hands, and they were all over him.  
  
Rather than scream or kick, Hunter felt he might vomit into the one sealing his mouth. It reeked of formaldehyde and decay now that it was splattered with the remnants of its fellow hands who hadn't made way for the Undertaker's heavy chain. Hunter took a tainted, bracing breath through his nostrils and peered at the man who'd simply appeared out of thin air.  
  
Undertaker drew a single cigarette from inside his overcoat and slipped it between dry, cracked lips. He sucked, and the end of the smoke lit itself hot red from within as though puffing from an invisible flame.  
  
Neither man spoke; Hunter watched in puzzled horror while the Undertaker simply pulled a series of long drags from his light and filled the air of their immediate circle in the darkness with curling, white nicotine clouds. These spread and descended on Hunter like sickly wisps of ashy cotton candy, doing him the small favour of almost masking the stench of the deadflesh mitts that pinned him down.  
  
The things felt more alive than they looked, squeezing here and readjusting there. Hunter watched morbidly, his skin crawling, until Undertaker bubbled out a soft chuckle. Hunter's eyes riveted to him.  
  
"Told you you'd be sorry if I ever got my hands on you," the leather-clad beast quipped. He slipped his cigarette back between his smirk again and puffed. Hunter coughed and felt his jaw gripped tighter.  
  
Undertaker slowly circled his prey as Hunter wheezed into dead skin. Mark's boots _clomped_ out an even rhythm on the hard ground.  Once he came full circle, he bent in a swift crouch between Hunter's knees. He squinted hard at Hunter, seeming to search his mind. After a lazy pull, Undertaker thoughtfully held his cigarette away and blew a wave of smoke, not breaking his unnerving gaze at all, even to blink.  
  
In the quiet lull, Hunter's panic subsided just enough for the thought, _Shawn! What did you do with Shawn?_ to resurface. Were it not for the gruesome gag, he would have spat the words in the burlier man's smug face.  
  
With a small, smoke-blowing sigh, Undertaker ground out his cigarette and said,   
  
"I didn't do half the things to him I'm going to do with you."


End file.
